Under one of the burning cressets of flame there was a slab of stone on which were piled, bedded in leaves, all red and gold, with pomp of autumn, the fruits of the vine in great clear pyramids of white and purple; tossed there so idly in such profusion from the past vintage-time, that a copper coin or two could buy a feast for half a score of mouths. Some of the clusters rotted already from their over-ripeness.
She looked at them with the passionate woeful eyes of a dog mad with thirst, which can see water and yet cannot reach it. She leaned towards them, she caught their delicious coldness in her burning hands, she breathed in their old familiar fragrance with quick convulsive breath.
"He dies there!" she muttered, lifting her face to the eyes of the woman guarding them. "He dies there; would you give me a little cluster, ever such a little one, to cool his mouth, for pity's sake?"
The woman thrust her away, and raised, shrill and sharp through all the clamor of the crowd, the cry of thief.
A score of hands were stretched to seize her, only the fleetness of her feet saved her. She escaped from them, and as a hare flies to her form, so she fled to the place whence she came.
She had done all she could; she had made one effort, for his sake; and all living creatures had repulsed her. None would believe; none would pity; none would hear. Her last strength was broken, her last faint hope had failed.
In her utter wretchedness she ceased to wonder, she ceased to revolt, she accepted the fate which all men told her was her heritage and portion.
"It was I who was mad," she thought; "so mad, so vain, to dream that I might ever be chosen as the reed was chosen. If I can save him, anyhow, what matter, what matter for me?"
She went back to the place where he lay—dying, unless help came to him. She climbed the stairway, and stole through the foulness and the darkness of the winding ways, and retraced her steps, and stood upon his threshold.
She had been absent but one hour; yet already the last, most abject, most wretched penalty of death had come to him. They robbed him in his senselessness.